Bailed Ugandan academic doubles down on presidential insults

A prominent Ugandan academic charged with cyber harassment for calling President Yoweri Museveni a "pair of buttocks" is back on social media with more colourful criticism of the country's leader.

Less than a week after being freed on bail feminist academic Stella Nyanzi was back on Facebook comparing Museveni's government to an infestation of "pubic lice" and promising to continue "poking the leopards' anuses", a reference to a warning Museveni himself had issued to opponents in the run-up to the last elections.

"I am now a fugitive in my own country," Nyanzi told her 150,000 Facebook followers in a post on Sunday. She said she cannot return home because, "the dictatorial regime's security goons still await for me there."

Nyanzi attacked Museveni, his wife and son -- long touted as a possible heir to the presidency -- rejecting the "illegitimate leadership of the despotic leopard, its foolish leopardess and the future reign of the promiscuous leopard-cub."

Museveni -- who has ruled the East African nation for 31 years -- referred to himself as a leopard in 2015 when he told the opposition they were asking for trouble if they were to touch "the anus of a leopard", an unusual turn of phrase even for a president known for his use of folksy metaphor and vivid idiom.

"I refuse to stop poking the leopards' anuses," Nyanzi wrote in the post that has received over 4,000 reactions and 500 shares.

"I am going to continue poke-poking all the leopards' anuses until either Uganda is free from the leopards or my death. This fugitive is not shutting up!"

On Tuesday Nyanzi wrote again on Facebook, comparing the government to parasitic pubic lice that "are sucking me dry!"

Freeing Nyanzi on bail last week after a month in custody, the judge refused a prosecution request that the academic be blocked from "making any adverse cyber attacks or any derogatory statements against the person of the victim (President Museveni) or his close members of his household."

Nyanzi's posts have attracted both scorn and applause in Uganda, a traditionally conservative country but one where many are fed up with Museveni's long rule.